Not on a plane yet. Cat sitting at mom's house till Sunday when I fly south. Car won't be ready till Tues. Darn I have to spend an extra day in Florida. LOL I'm going to do a drop in on Darkspeed and see his extra large A/S. He lives only 25 miles from the car and is on the route back north.
P.S. I sent you a PM w/ the e-mail to the seller of the wing windows.

Not on a plane yet. Cat sitting at mom's house till Sunday when I fly south. Car won't be ready till Tues. Darn I have to spend an extra day in Florida. LOL I'm going to do a drop in on Darkspeed and see his extra large A/S. He lives only 25 miles from the car and is on the route back north.
P.S. I sent you a PM w/ the e-mail to the seller of the wing windows.

That is a good thing that you can visit Darkspeed. You are lucky to be able to see all these people from the Forums. What an education you are getting.

I envy your ability to head south this time of year. Enjoy your break from the cold and snow. Come January it might be even more sweet!
Sandy

Separate the panes with butyl, tape the edges with metal foil tape, and float this glass sandwich in Vulkem in the channel

It sounds easy and perhaps I am making it more difficult than it needs to be. We hope to only do this once and make it look great when we are done. Where do you get metal foil tape? Is this the same as what you get in the 3" roll and cut it down? Can you do the same with the wing and stack windows?
Thanks for your help.
Sandy

Sandy
I converted my old fogged and bubbly old double pane windows to single pane configuration using new "U" gaskets and the outer (larger) pane of glass. Airstream wants $450.00 for new single pane sashes. I rebuilt mine to NEW condition for less than $20.00 each. I also have a thread posted that shows you exactly how to do it. Mike

Sandy
I converted my old fogged and bubbly old double pane windows to single pane configuration using new "U" gaskets and the outer (larger) pane of glass. Airstream wants $450.00 for new single pane sashes. I rebuilt mine to NEW condition for less than $20.00 each. I also have a thread posted that shows you exactly how to do it. Mike

Can you link the exact spot that references this fix? I was searching and kind of felt I was pulling apart one Russian doll to find another. I might be missing something here. Thanks.
Sandy

Day One: We carefully cleaned the first set of double panes on the living room for the second time. It took a lot longer than we suspected because once you looked on four different surfaces, there was a lot more there than you thought. Once we had spent about three hours cleaning after we thought we had already cleaned them, we set about trying the 28 year old gasket I got yesterday.

Amazingly, it was the exact size gasket we needed which is kind of like winning the lottery. That is the plus side to visiting the funny farm for 45 minutes. Only deal was that the corners gapped and we could not get them to fit tightly. How the factory did this is beyond us but after a few hours of fiddling around, we decided this was not the route to take. I think it has something to do with two Norwegians working together..... No offense to smarter Norwegians out there and to those that tried to tell me it can't be done.

The gasket fit perfectly in the straight sections and looked great. We would have gone with it but the corners were not fitting tightly nd so we knew we would have problems with the seal. I also submitted the question to the VAP and they basically said the same thing "There is no gasket out there and just do them single panes." The other option presented was to buy NOS which we may end up doing if we can't do it the Norwegian way. We can't say we didn't try every available option first.

Hating to admit defeat, we will fumble along tomorrow. We are going to try another window and do it single pane trying to salvage both panes just in case. I think what we have done with the first one looks pretty good but we are not sure we can maintain the condensation free environment for long. That would really be disappointing to have to redo this in another year.

I know some people have suggested just buying new windows but we are trying to keep as much of the exterior original because the interior is going to be all new. We wanted it to be looking 1976 at first glance but 2012 on the interior. I also think we have spent so much more on this already than I ever dreamed we would be spending that it seems like complete folly some days. I try to fight the urge to give up and admit defeat. It is sort of like Monte Python's Holy Grail castle story.

Thanks for all of the advice and help along the way. I will keep everyone posted on our progress. I will put up pictures as soon as I have them. We need to get the first window installed successfully before I can do that. I am hoping in all of our trials we don't end up breaking any of them but I guess we take it as it comes.
Sandy

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I know some people have suggested just buying new windows but we are trying to keep as much of the exterior original because the interior is going to be all new.

Thanks for all of the advice and help along the way. I will keep everyone posted on our progress. I will put up pictures as soon as I have them. We need to get the first window installed successfully before I can do that. I am hoping in all of our trials we don't end up breaking any of them but I guess we take it as it comes.
Sandy

Sandy.

Replacement windows are exactly the same as you now have, except they are single pane instead of the double pane.

Same hinge, glass, sash, latch and gaskets for the opening windows.

The stack, vista view and wing replacement windows are exactly the same, but again, single pane.

Thanks Mike,
Having read through your thread, I can see it might be good to try your method. Amazingly enough, by the time I got out of bed this am, my husband had completed the first window we had already attempted the day before. He actually got the gasket I got at the circus store to work. So tomorrow, as soon as I get off work, I will be headed back to the circus to buy the rest of the gasket. I can hardly wait for that adventure. More entertainment for the crew.

I will show my husband your thread and see if he is game to try it. I know the reel the shop had of this old gasket is not going to be enough to complete all of our windows so we may try your approach to finish them out. Thanks for sharing that with us and helping me to figure out where I needed to go next.
Sandy

Replacement windows are exactly the same as you now have, except they are single pane instead of the double pane.

Same hinge, glass, sash, latch and gaskets for the opening windows.

The stack, vista view and wing replacement windows are exactly the same, but again, single pane.

Andy

If we can't make our originals work, we may end up ordering them. We are hoping we can fix them in one way or the other and save the funds to buy the other items we are going to need yet on this trailer or the 1959 Pacer. Thanks for your help and I appreciate your willingness to assist us in this adventure.
Sandy

We spent all weekend deconstructing double paned windows and cleaning them up top to bottom. All new butyl tape and new gasket at least until we ran out of both supplies. Now we await our order for more so we can get the windows finished up.

This part of the rebuild has been rather painstaking because we don't want to break any glass (broke one inside pane aleady...I guess rivets and glass don't like each other when they get rudely introduced). It has taken a lot of time to pull the window apart as each one had layers of old stickly gray butyl and a type of foil edging around the perimeter of the windows.

This work is messy but satisfying because you can actually see progress as you work along. We discovered that the self adhesive small D gasket works the easiest but of course we didn't order too much that because we didn't know how it would work. Turns out we should have picked up about a case.

We have the large center front window out and all cleaned up awaiting the butyl and the gasket. I cleaned up each set of window handles and operators while I left my husband to pull the windows panes apart. We developed a good system that make it hum along and no major, major disasters...yet. We are even still speaking to each other.

The large bathroom window and the two wing windows are lthe only ones left to take out and rebuild. We are hoping the wing windows are a little more forgiving and less troublesome than we expect. Both of them appear to have held a large amount of water at some time during their adventures because you can see the mineral deposits between the two panes. The time these windows have taken from both of us is unreal. I know we move slowly but this is wild. We are taking our time to avoid any problems that are irreversible and still manage to save all of our digits.

I had purchased some white bristle brush 3M wheels that went on a drill that Aerowood (I think it was him) recommended to use on the windows. I had gotten them last winter after reading how well they worked. I asked my husband why he wasn't using those to clean the frames up and he said "If you had gotten the mandrel for them, they would be a lot easier to use." Geez....I gotta think of everything for this operation.
Sandy

Great news Sandy. The wing windows may prove to be a bit more challenging. The straight edge of the frame is screwed to the ciurved part both top and bottom. The screws are very small and will be severely rusted into place. The screws are steel and they will have nearly fused to the aluminum frame. If possible soak the entire window is a rust buster for several days before you try to remove the screws. The screws are not very forgiving as they are thin and you can break the heads off them very easily. Don't ask me how I know that. LOL.

Great news Sandy. The wing windows may prove to be a bit more challenging. The straight edge of the frame is screwed to the ciurved part both top and bottom. The screws are very small and will be severely rusted into place. The screws are steel and they will have nearly fused to the aluminum frame. If possible soak the entire window is a rust buster for several days before you try to remove the screws. The screws are not very forgiving as they are thin and you can break the heads off them very easily. Don't ask me how I know that. LOL.

Ugh....We were hoping since things have gone relatively well so far, that maybe, just maybe, we would luck out on the hardest ones. I will tell Glenn that you said to soak the windows first. Do you have a reccommendation on the type of rust buster to use? He got some spray on screw loosener stuff that he said "This stuff is a piece of *^%$#!" so I am guessing that wasn't the best buy he ever made.

Did you have any trouble cleaning yours up or did you just replace them? It will be nice to have these windows done before Christmas as we will be having a housefull over the holidays. Two kids are here already, and two others with husband/significant other in tow due by Friday along with two of the most delightful little grandchildren as well. Yippee!! I wonder if my daughter would mind if I put the little girls to work painting interior skins for the Airstream? They are too little to start to try polishing. Besides that will give them something to do next summer when they come for their annual summer vacation at our place .
Sandy